All wars have casualties, and it's safe to say that, plotwise, the first world war has taken a terrible toll on Downton Abbey (Sun, 9pm, ITV1). Plots: the place is swimming in them. Plots everywhere. I can't breathe for them. Oh how I long for sleepy prewar Downton, where footage of a rotund-bottomed labrador dawdling across a lawn spliced with the Earl taking exception to Mrs Patmore's heavy handed game consommé seasoning and a few one-liners from Maggie Smith gurning beneath a pile of ostrich feathers felt like a well-stuffed ITV1 hour. Not now the war has come, oh no.

"I've been reading a book on political ideologies, Lady Sybil!" blurts Tom the chauffeur during a typical two-minute scene. "I am against this awful war and am plotting a protest against it" says Lady Sybil (dressed as a nurse). "Drive me to the hospital, it's important for me to make some beds and prove I have the common touch and am not a run-of-the mill posho!" Tom (clanking theme change): "Of course Sybil, and by the way, I'm in love with you." Enter stage left, Lady Mary (and her haunted vagina): "Sybil why are you fraternising with a lowly chauffeur? This is not the done thing, we must not be true to our feelings under any circumstances. It's only 1914!" Sybil: (lips very tight) "Well Mary, maybe if you were more true to your feelings, you'd inform cousin Matthew you liked him and the enigma of the entire Crawley legacy would be solved!" (Coach pulls on to Downton driveway carrying 70 bandaged men. Lady Mary looks at her clipboard.) "Sybil! I am not in a place to discuss Matthew. We're turning Downton into a convalescent home in 20 minutes and I'm required to stage a music hall gala this evening. Father thinks what these men with missing arms and legs need is me honking through Burlington Bertie!" Cue dramatic Downton music and the ensuing ad break featuring Jarvis Cocker and Michel Gondry on the Eurostar.

I am exhausted. And this is before coping with Lady Edith's quickfire tryst with the farmer (plotline seemingly harvested midway and never mentioned again), Mr Bates and his Scooby-Doo villain wife, Mrs Crawley going awol to Europe and the Earl of Grantham's rampant haemorrhoids. Yes, OK, Julian Fellowes has never made it overtly clear that the Earl is in the grip of pile misery, but this might explain why he's spent five episodes bloody livid about nothing. "I need to go to war. I need to do my bit!" he screams. Ten minutes pass. "Unless I get my own way all the time, Downton can't be a convalescent home!" he screams throwing his toy soldiers from the pram. And in all honestly, despite loving Downton, I have long since lost even fleeting interest in Matthew and Mary pretending not to fancy each other. People, there's a war on, get a grip. Any woman who can drive a man they're in love with to the railway station en route to the frontline, give him a lucky teddy bear, and then turn on her heel aloofly and stomp off before a kiss thinking, "Hee hee! In your face, knobhead. Another point to me in the battle of who cares less!" actually deserves to die alone in the west wing, to be found by maids spring-cleaning three weeks later, half-chewed by corgis. War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.